


from an unexpected quarter

by Alasse_Irena



Category: The Strange Case of Starship Iris (Podcast)
Genre: First Meeting, Gen, cw: guns though never described in detail, cw: mention of capital punishment but no one is executed on screen, prison break - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21845101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alasse_Irena/pseuds/Alasse_Irena
Summary: After the Mechanics Union uprising is quashed, Sana Tripathi, awaiting execution on Cresswin Landing, thinks her luck has run out. Arkady Patel is about to prove her wrong.
Relationships: Arkady Patel & Sana Tripathi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	from an unexpected quarter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [often_adamanta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/often_adamanta/gifts).



It’s always cold on Cresswin Landing. Having grown up largely in space, Sana Tripathi doesn’t mind that so much. What gets her is the damp. When it’s not drizzling, a watery sun filters down through dense, humid air that seems to clog Sana’s nose and throat. Her socks are never quite dry.

 _No need to worry about that much longer_ , she tells herself, but it’s not particularly reassuring. She’s read letters and accounts from death row before, and a lot of them described finding a strange sense of calm in their last hours, but Sana’s brain doesn’t seem to have coming to terms with death on its agenda.

She wants to see the stars one more time. She can picture it: a million pinpricks of silver on the soft, black curtain of space, uninhibited by atmosphere. Taking her off-planet was deemed too risky for a last request; the Cresswin Landing administration had offered her a final meal instead.

It had been tempting to ask for something extravagant and difficult to obtain, but Sana had imagined discovering with her last mouthful that she didn’t actually like caviarand changed her mind. Instead, she had conceded to a more sentimental part of herself, and written out a veggie curry recipe that her mother had given her when she moved out of home

(She hears her mother’s voice ringing in her imagination now - “Get some vitamins into you, honey. That body’s got to last you another sixty years.”

“Take that, Mum,” she thinks, fierce and teary.)

The sound of a lock opening snaps Sana back to herself, and she dashes at her eyes viciously with the back of her hand. If they want to tell the rest of the inhabitants of Cresswin Landing that the leader of the insurrection cried for her mother in her last hours, the least Sana can do is make sure that they’re lying.

The hinges grate as the door opens. “Your dinner, prisoner.” The guard’s words are impersonal, but his tone is surprisingly kind, and the steaming bowl he brings her does smell like home.

“Thank you.” Sana responds on autopilot. If she had stopped to think about it, she would have questioned whether he deserved her thanks for this small gesture or not.

Sana tears a piece of naan. It’s not as good as either of her parents made, but it’s a passable attempt, and she chews it slowly and swallows around the lump in her throat. The guard turns his back, apparently satisfied that she isn’t going to cause any havoc with her dinner. He’s about to leave when Sana hears an unmistakable sound.

It’s the soft _click_ of the shackle on her ankle being remotely unlocked.

So many things happen in the moments following that years afterwards, Sana tries to put the events back in their correct order when she’s having trouble sleeping.

Something comes spinning over the guard’s head - it’s an electrified weapon of some kind; one of the stun guns that the prison guards keep at their belts to break up trouble. Sana catches it, and without thinking, pulls the trigger on the guard.

She’s never fired a gun before. She’s a mechanic - a very _good_ mechanic, but that still doesn't involve firearms training.

Still, it seems to work. The guard drops, twitching. Behind him, in the doorway, someone’s standing. She looks about seventeen. She also looks grown up, tired, and ready to end someone’s life if she had to.

She says, “I overrode the central locking system, escape ship east of C Block, ready to go 18:38, run!”

Sana follows the final instruction before she manages to parse the rest. She picks a direction - left - and sprints with everything that she has. It seems that no-one yet knows about the security breach; she bolts past several startled guards, and by the time they get their act together, it seems that other inmates have realised something is up.

Nobody knows much, but there’s a kind of instinctive solidarity between prisoners, and the subtle obstructions of strangers - a group pausing for a moment in a hallway, one inmate throwing a punch at another - are enough to get Sana out of the building.

She dives into the muddy shrubbery between the cell blocks and the manufacturing block, and lies flat there, out of sight, breathing hard. Moisture is seeping into her clothes.

The buzzer rings out that marks the end of dinner. 18:30.

What had her saviour said? East of C Block. 18:38.

That leaves Sana eight minutes to make her way two blocks south, and around the other side of a building, unseen. It’s impossible, but the other option is going back to her execution.

She goes forward, through the sludge, on her belly.

It lasts a handful of minutes, before Sana hears a sound behind her - heavy boots in soft mud. She fires the stun gun again, and this time misses. Fingers wrap around her ankle. She kicks out, and must make contact with something, because she hears a grunt, and the guard’s grasp loosens for a moment.

A moment is enough.

Sana gets to her feet and breaks into a run again.

The ship is well camouflaged, when Sana rounds the corner of C Block, but Sana had worked on the development of dissembling light array technology for concealing small ships some years ago, and it’s not so hard to see through once you know what you’re looking at.

There will be specialists on the way with heavy weaponry, but the ship's hull should hold against whatever the run-of-the-mill guards are carrying.

She throws herself head first through a barely visible hatch, and is gratified by a brief moment of confusion on the face of her nearest pursuer before he realises what has happened. She pulls the hatch closed behind her. “Lock, ELLA, _lock now_!”

“Request overridden,” says ELLA, politely.

Sana screams. She can _hear_ IGR regulation boots on the outside of the ship. She has about a second before -

There’s a sound outside, a kind of wet crunch, and a weight - maybe human sized, falling to the side. Sana hangs on to the inside handle of the hatch with her entire bodyweight. 

“Let go, dammit! It’s me.”

Sana half recognises the voice, but largely she just knows that’s probably not what the IGR guards would be shouting, and she drops the handle.

Someone tumbles in.

“Thanks ELLA, override code 383114, lock please.”

“Door locked,” intones ELLA. “Autopilot engaged. Take off in fourteen seconds.”

Fourteen. Sana can’t breathe fast enough to keep up with her lungs’ desperate scream for more oxygen. She’s fit - she’s always done physical work to support herself - but there’s a huge difference between ship repair and the adrenalin-fueled sprint she’s just done.

There’s a jolt as the artificial gravity kicks in against the G-force of take-off. It’s so painfully familiar from before Cresswin Landing that Sana has to choke back a sob.

“Sana Tripathi, right?” says her companion, somehow not out of breath at all. She offers a hand; it’s wide-palmed and long-fingered. “Arkady Patel. Let’s get the fuck off this pathetic excuse for a planet.”

***

Someone from Cresswin Landing hails the ship a couple of times over the comms, which both passengers resolutely ignore. By the time the prison guard is ready to launch and make chase (if Sana and Arkady are even worth the money and effort), well, there’s a lot of space out there, and they’re a pretty small target. They should be able to get away.

Sana is so keyed up with adrenalin that her hands are shaking. She curls them into fists and jams them behind her knees. _You’re not dead_ . She repeats it silently like a prayer. _Not dead, not dead, not dead._

She stares at her saviour to try and distract herself from the echo in her head. Arkady Patel has a strong build, broader than Sana. There’s a pale scar beside her left eyebrow, white against the brown of her skin. Her face has a strange in-between air - both barely adult, and with years of exhaustion behind it. It makes her curiously ageless. She could be sixteen or thirty six. 

“Are you...okay?” Arkady asks finally.

Sana blushes. “Sorry. I’m fine.” She takes a slow breath, and lets it out. “I mean, I’m not fine. An hour ago I was coming to terms with mortality.” She feels shaky and teary again.

“It’s not wasted effort,” says Arkady. “I promise you could still die.”

Startled, Sana laughs. “That doesn’t make me feel heaps better.”

They lapse into silence. Sana picks at mud drying on her prison regulation coverall. Finally, she says, “Where did you come from?”

Arkady waves in a direction that is presumably meant to indicate the prison planet they’ve left behind. “Back there.”

“No, I mean, what organisation are you working for?”

Arkady frowns. “No one, anymore. That’s the whole deal with a prison break.”

“Somebody must have overridden the locks.”

The Arkady gives her a look; it’s a look Sana knows well; she remembers the exact feeling from being under-estimated as an apprentice mechanic. _Oh_. “You did it yourself?”

“Uh huh.”

“And the ship?”

“I cracked the firewall. I’ve made some contacts outside.”

She makes it sound so straightforward that Sana doesn't want to ask for specifics “Nice work getting out,” she says instead. “I'm relieved you're on my side.” After a moment, she adds, "Why me, anyway?"

"Mechanic." Arkady shrugs. "I don't want to die out here because the airbags are faulty or something."

Sana raises an eyebrow. "Like half the Mechanic's Union is in there. You could've picked a _way_ lower profile mechanic."

"Maybe I just like a challenge. I've been in there seventeen years. It gets _boring_."

Sana can feel herself blanch. _Seventeen_ years?

"Don't need your sympathy," Arkady adds sharply.

"I wasn't," says Sana, who was. "I just..."

"Just what?" Arkady cuts her off. "Honestly, I liked what you were up to with the Union, and it seemed like it would really get up their noses if you got away."

"Oh." Surprise colours Sana's voice. "That's...nice of you? I owe you one."

Arkady shrugs. "As long as you take it out on the IGR I'm happy."

"Trust me, I'd do that for free."

***

When her body finally lets the last of the adrenalin go, Sana falls asleep to wheeling stars in the black outside the viewport.

**Author's Note:**

> I loved thinking about how these two might have met, and it only made sense that it was through a prison break!
> 
> Enjoy your Yuletide, and I hope that I've added a little extra brightness to it!
> 
> With love from your Yulefriend.


End file.
